Monday, 31 December 2012

Housing and back porches in the inner city of Uptown Chicago,
Illinois, a neighborhood of poor white Southerners: photo by Danny Lyon, August 1974

The purpose of words is to convey ideas.When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten.

Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.

Chuang Tzu: from Means and Ends (xxvi. II) in The Way of Chuang Tzu, translated by Thomas Merton, 1965

Two youths in Uptown, Chicago, Illinois: photo by Danny Lyon, August 1974

Abandoned house on the North Side ofChicago, Illinois: photo by Danny Lyon, August 1974

House in the inner city ofChicago, Illinois. The inner city today Is
an absolute contradiction to the mainstream America of gas stations, expressways, shopping centers and tract homes. It is populated by blacks, Latins and the white poor. Some of the best American architecture survives in her "worst" neighborhoods, only because it hasn't [yet] been demolished: photo by Danny Lyon, August 1974

The paradox built into Chuang Tzu's saying is a reminder of the close family relation between what we call humour and what we call wisdom.

Danny Lyon's great photos of this part of Chicago in the years immediately prior to its "renovation" (gentrification) bring back powerful memories indeed, "becoming evidence" of a lost but not entirely forgotten past. My first ten years were passed in a building just like those in the top two shots here. Second storey back porch with rickety stairwell, precarious wooden railings: that's the frame in which I remember the world first appearing.

I love Danny Lyon's handling of Kodachrome, the brown and brick red tones marked with vivid bright red passages -- the medium in the hands of a master.

The red spots leaping out like semaphores... one recalls the story of Turner coming back for a last look at an exhibition of one of his grand seascapes just before the public opening, studying the canvas again as if for the first time, and then applying a single daub of bright red that brought the whole work instantly to life, forever.

All it took to turn the work from something very good to something unforgettable was that one abrupt red splash.